What is your depth of field (DOF) preview button for?

Basically, the depth of field (DOF) preview button is for visually checking how much depth of field you have in the photo. If you want to use a certain aperture – an example might be that you are taking a photo of something and want to try and get a certain part in focus and another out of focus (OOF) – so most people would snap off a couple of shots like this and look at the results of the photo on the display screen to see whether the shot worked out. There is a much easier way to do this, by pressing the depth of field preview button and looking through the viewfinder you can see exactly what will be in focus and what will be blurry. It will look a little darker but hold on, we’ll get to that!

Post 3 images in this thread with their settings and what you learned during this exercise.

Please feel free to ask questions. You are encouraged to comment on each other's images!

SS 1/80 F5.6 ISO 400



SS 1/250 F5.6 ISO 400



SS1/40 F8 ISO 400



SS 1/10 F16 ISO 400

I preferred using F5.6, as this gave more depth to the photos. I found that as I went up the F stops, the picture appeared flatter and more was in focus.

It was very windy when i took these rose photos so you can see my mums hand holding them still. Eventhough i'm in close you can still see the sharpness and blurredness (spell check!) around the edges.


f16 400 1/60


f11 400 1/160


f5.6 100 1/100


f8 100 1/80

and i couldn't resist posting this one.....it so sums up the season!!


f5.6 100 1/10

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Hi everyone,

Here are my photos for this week, a mooring along the Grand Union Canal .... the background becomes noticably less blurry as the aperture closed down from f/4 to f/22 ...


Mooring ISO 100 f/4 1/640


Mooring ISO 100 f/11 1/50


Mooring ISO 100 f/22 1/10

The sky looked a little more interesting on the way back from our walk ....


Canal ISO 125 f/8 1/200

Great autumnal shots from Sam and Louise ... love the berries and the conkers!

I apologise to all, I have only just been able to get on the forum. Looks like you all got to grips with the depth of field tutorial and I can see some great shots. You can see how the different apertures have affected the items on different planes and created shots to make your subjects stand out.